This is an excerpt of a post that appears on Medium .Click here to see the full story there.
As a white woman, I post a lot of things on social media directed specifically at other white people and how we contribute to racism. I’m not doing the woker-than-thou thing, putting myself above it all. I’ve been actively learning about systemic racism in earnest for only about a year, and I have infinitely more to learn. When I post an article or video about something white people need to stop doing, I very well may have done that exact thing in the past. Unfortunately, that includes having said #notallwhitepeople, if not in those exact words. I’ll explain that in a minute, but first, please watch the following 2-minute video about the problem with not-all-white-people sentiments, particularly in the context of what happened in Charlottesville two weeks ago.
Flashback to January, after the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. …
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© Copyright Camille Williams and Wake Up, Mama! 2017.
Wake Up, Mama! 
Camille, I’m seeing what not to do, but I’m not seeing what TO do. Do nothing? Be quiet? I’m certainly confused.
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Hi Melissa, could you clarify your question for me? Do you mean what to say instead in that discussion?
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Sure… let’s start there. What do you say. I assume just have good listening skills.
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Sorry for the delay answering! I guess to me it is more about empathic listening and not saying things that are invalidating, derailing, defending in a situation like that. And further, taking that perspective in and considering what it means for us as white women and mothers. For those of us who have been moved by last year’s election to resist, protest and get active, why not before? Where have we been when black women have needed us to speak out about the abysmally disproportionate maternal and infant mortality rates for black women and babies, or the fear mothers of black sons live with every day that they will get a call that their babies have been shot by the police, to name just two of the biggest issues. It’s a fair question—why was that not enough to move us in these kind of numbers before? So I guess a better way to respond would have been something like: “Yes, I hear you. We are so very, very late. It must really hurt. I’m sorry.” And then ask ourselves, what are we doing to examine how we benefit from being white in this culture, and what are we doing to learn more about these issues, and how will we actively contribute to the dismantling of racism?
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